Before we begin, I would like to place a disclaimer that these are thoughts and ideas that have come from osteopathic practitioners with much greater experience and ability than myself. And in listening to and trusting in their teachings, certain ideas have become, to some extent, self-evident truths. I have had to quell my own ego, my own psyche, in the desire to help the community here at the clinic osteopathically. If it can be useful to just a few, so be it. If not, that is fine, also. These are not physiological nor religious ideas, but a vehicle to aid in a shift in perspective that I hope empowers people’s intimate journey with the health and healing from within, rather than without—that is all.
Many people ask what they can do to get the most out of their osteopathic intervention for health. And because of the current climate and expected protocols from other modalities, what they are really asking for are exercises or stretches that they do as homework to further the work we do here. While exercise is good for overall health and wellbeing, there is a misconception of what an osteopathic intervention really is, and so I thought it might be a nice idea to write what I think would be useful to someone going to see an osteopath, which begins in the mind.
Osteopathy is a perspective of health and healing in the body that places one in connection with the developmental and healing forces in nature. For as long as we think of having something done to our bodies to promote healing, we are missing out on the intimate connection with these natural forces within us. So let us outline, briefly, the mind, body, spirit triad that might help us shift our perspective of how to become aware of how we can be best prepared to have an osteopathic relationship with ourselves.
The Spirit is the perspective of perfection. It doesn’t need to make effort to be. It is health, the higher self, and is the full expression of compassion and love. It is the animating force that runs through nature and gives the opportunity for full self-expression.
The mind is the psyche, the soul, or ego. At its core, it is dualistic. Its virtue is to be able to disappear in the presence of nature, but if we are out of tune with nature, it is challenging to see itself as part of the whole, part of the spirit. In our modern world, in our internal dialogues, we have many perspectives of what is and what should be, many of which are part of a cultural, social, and familial inheritance that colour our perspective of the world. The psyche exists as an outer projection of the world that is mistakenly taken to be real. As a result, it never truly knows reality, and as such, often leaves one with the idea of being injured, isolated, confused, and in grief, which prevents one from some kind of union with something greater. The more we look externally to find meaning for the psyche, the further we are pushed away from the centre of being. So the question becomes, how do we look at ourselves in health if we are continually externalizing our experience as a projection of will in the world?
The body is the mediating force that can bring the soul back to spirit. If controlled by the psyche, we distort the perception and function of the body because we mistake the skin we in which we reside for who we are, just as if we were to mistake our clothing, our cars, etc. for who and what we are. It can also be the seat for us to experience the presence of the spirit, and we do that by getting in touch with the processes not for illness, injury, or disease, but instead by focusing on the force of the animating spirit itself as being self-organizing, intelligent, and self-healing. The latter is a force present in every aspect of your life, although it is mostly taken for granted or fought against. It is the healing power to reknit a cut, the recovery from a sprain, or resolution of an illness.
These events seem to come from no where. We go through a process of suffering, but most things resolve themselves over time due to the reality of the spirit manifesting itself through the course of our biological functions. And so the question becomes, under osteopathic care, how do we become acquainted with this process? How do we know the spirit while in our bodies? How can the observer, the psyche, dissolve into the health of the individual and experience Nature?
Those questions are what I would invite people to meditate on prior to, as well as after, receiving treatment. And the answers to these will be found from an inner knowledge unique to the individual, but universally true for us all. In my experience, a manual osteopathic intervention is a moment for us to recalibrate what we perceive to be true with what is actually true, and in that turning toward the natural mechanisms of life, we see our own health as the expression of the divine in the nowness of time. That is what the intimacy of life experienced in osteopathy offers—the ability to feel the forces of nature express themselves fully in our bodies.
A.T. Still said that anyone can find disease; an osteopath looks for the health. That is what we are attempting to tune into. It has little to do with bones or muscles, unless the influence of these bones and muscles are interfering with the self-healing forces within the body from fully being actualized. We work with the health because that is what we choose to see as we turn our perspective from attempting to do something for or to someone to seeing how we can help facilitate the healing process from within and in doing so, put ourselves and that someone else in touch with the spirit.
So while waiting for treatment, rather than being distracted by social media, social status, work, relationships, and all the external projections on our psyche, perhaps we could sit in a moment of reverence for the healing forces that run through our bodies that hold the wisdom of evolutionary pressures for millennia and beyond, and in our own simple forms, come to a moment of stillness that allows us to realize our true reality of being full, complete, and perfect. How open are we to that possibility? How ready are we to put ourselves aside for this chance to commune with nature, not from without, but from within? How can we shift our minds from the perspective of having something done to them, to participating in the healing process with someone who studies the laws of nature within the human body? How ready are we to share that experience with our osteopaths as they search for the health in us, and help bring an internal wisdom to our lives that lets us see what is, rather than what our limited desires and projections would like to be real?